Not getting picked does not mean you are not enough
A priest argues that rejection is specific, not personal, and each person has a different part to play.
Ascension Presents · I’ll Never Forget What My Ex-Girlfriend Told Me (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)Father Mike Schmitz, a priest, was talking about a feeling almost everyone knows. Someone else gets picked for the team, the job, or the part, and you do not. He said the moment usually brings one of two wounds.
The first is jealousy. The second, he said, cuts deeper. It is the quiet question, "Am I not good enough? Am I not enough?"
His answer was direct. "It's not that you and I weren't good enough to be chosen," he said. "It's that we weren't chosen for this."
What he meant, he explained, is that life is not one contest with one winner. He pointed to the Bible story in which David, the youngest son, is chosen as king over his older brother Eliab and his other brothers. He also pointed to Jesus choosing 12 apostles while leaving other followers behind. In his telling, God still had a plan for Eliab's life and for those other followers. There was simply more than one way to serve, and that particular assignment was not theirs.
That distinction matters, he argued, because rejection feels personal when it is really specific. Not getting that role does not mean you are unworthy of any role. It means you were not assigned that one.
He put it another way. No one, he said, is an extra in someone else's story. None of us are the main character, he believes, but each person is invited to play a specific part.
So instead of staring at the person who was picked, he urged his listeners to ask a different question: What am I being called to? As he put it, "The great adventure of life is God, what is that thing? Help me say yes."
Questions people ask
Who was Eliab?
Eliab was the oldest son of Jesse in the Bible story Father Mike refers to. When the prophet Samuel came looking for a new king, Eliab looked like the obvious choice, but David, the youngest, was picked instead.
Who were the apostles?
They were the 12 men Jesus selected as his closest followers. In Christian belief, they were sent out to teach and lead the early church, and most are traditionally believed to have died for their faith.